“It’s great to have these new options, but you have to balance that with, what happens to the neighbors who are close by?” said Allandale Neighborhood Association President David Mintz.Read entire article by clicking more.

Growth, traffic encroaching on neighborhoods in Austin’s District 7

BY SARAH COPPOLA - AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

When a Little Woodrow’s bar was proposed for Burnet Road in 2012, Allandale and Brentwood residents came out in force to oppose it. A bar would bring noise and parking problems to the area, which is near single-family homes, they said. But the owner noted that new high-rise apartments are drawing young professionals to the street.

The City Council OK’d the bar, but limited its hours. The dispute exemplified the conundrum facing North Austin: Can quiet, older neighborhoods co-exist with the activity coming to commercial strips like Burnet and Lamar Boulevard?

“It’s great to have these new options, but you have to balance that with, what happens to the neighbors who are close by?” said Allandale Neighborhood Association President David Mintz.

This is District 7, one of the city’s 10 geographic areas that will elect its own Austin City Council member this fall.

Andy Rainosek and his fiancee, Francoise Luca, both live in the Gracywoods neighborhood in North Austin and serve on the neighborhood ... Read MoreThe “pork chop,” as some residents call it, runs from 45th Street north to Howard Lane. It then sweeps east along Parmer Lane past Interstate 35 to Tech Ridge Boulevard, where big technology firms sit amid a lot of vacant land.

By design, District 7 curves around two districts to the east that have many Hispanic and African-American residents. Those districts were drawn to comply with federal voting rights laws. District 7 thus mostly has white residents, but also has one of the largest Asian populations of the 10 districts.

Allandale, Brentwood and Crestview were post-World-War-II suburbs that are now considered central — and targets for redevelopment.

Less-trendy, middle-class neighborhoods to the north were built mostly in the 1960s and ’70s. Residents there are not as worried about tear-downs as they are about traffic along corridors like Parmer Lane and MoPac Boulevard.

And in the center of District 7 is the Domain, a dense mix of retail stores, offices and apartments that feels like a world unto itself. City leaders imagine the Domain and areas near it becoming a “second downtown” someday.

Crestview on the district’s south end is a diverse blend of ages and incomes, including retirees and young families, said Matthew Armstrong, 40, a software company sales director who moved here about a year ago with his wife and two sons.

The streets are flat and lined with big trees, good for walking and biking, he said. The area has fun, small businesses like Little Deli and Top Notch Hamburgers; three high-quality, arts-focused schools; and deeply engaged residents “who form political groups like other people in Austin form bands,” he said.

What Crestview lacks is a park, he said. Residents are trying to persuade the city to turn an old Austin Energy site into parkland. (District 7 has the least park space of the 10, according to city demographer Ryan Robinson.)

Another problem is transit, Armstrong said. Crestview has a commuter rail stop at Lamar and Justin Lane, but there are no good paths to walk there, so it feels cut off from the neighborhood, he said.

Areas like Crestview and Allandale are also bracing for a wave of redevelopment, as buyers look for homes near the urban core and developers eye Burnet and Lamar for mixed-use projects. Allandale residents are even thinking about starting a legal defense fund to fight proposals that are out-of-sync with its zoning patterns.

“We have age-balanced neighborhoods, but the new infill growth tends to target a narrow demographic of young people. That’s been the cause of some cultural conflict,” said Steven Zettner, 46, who edits a neighborhood website about District 7. “We need good transportation and housing but want to do it in a way that maintains the existing communities here.”

Redevelopment isn’t a big concern farther north in Gracywoods, a subdivision off of Braker Lane.

The neatly kept homes were built in the 1970s and ’80s on what was formerly the Gracy dairy farm. The Gracy family home still stands, and guineas wander through landscaped yards.

The surrounding area has evolved from rural to suburban in the past few decades, with new apartments and offices on Metric Boulevard, a rail station on Kramer Lane, an Austin Community College branch and a large medical complex, said Gracywoods Neighborhood Association President Francoise Luca.

Gracywoods could use features like more sidewalks, storm sewers and creek erosion projects to protect a tributary of Walnut Creek, she said.

“There is still sort of a country feel here, and we need infrastructure to catch up with what’s happening around us,” said Luca, 54, who owns a marketing firm and a finance company.

On the district’s north end, hundreds of single-family homes are hidden behind sound walls on Parmer Lane. These areas sometimes struggle to get the city’s attention.

Homeowners in Scofield Farms, an upper-middle-class subdivision of brick homes, would like to see city leaders do something about traffic congestion along such heavy commuter corridors as Parmer, MoPac and Lamar, resident Steven Walden said.

Milwood, a neighborhood of smaller homes nearby, wants more speed bumps to fight cut-through traffic, said Milwood Neighborhood Association President Ryan Lanier, a 44-year-old Spanish tutor. It is also waiting on the parks department to finish a hike-and-bike trail connecting Walnut Creek to Balcones District Park – a long-promised project that has been plagued by contractor problems and delays.

But Lanier said the neighborhood is safe and welcoming, with a city library, a park and plenty of shopping and amenities along U.S. 183.

“If you don’t want to go downtown, you don’t have to,” she said. “We have most of what we need right here.”

About this seriesThis is the seventh in a series of profiles of the 10 newly created districts that will elect their first Austin City Council members this fall. For full coverage of Austin’s move to the 10-1 system, including a list of the candidates who have declared their intentions to run, go tostatesman.com/councildistricts.